Remarks by President Obama and President Hu Jintao of the People’s Republic of China Before Bilateral Meeting

Intercontinental Downtown Hotel
Toronto, Canada

4:45 P.M. EDT

PRESIDENT HU:  (As translated.)  Your Excellency, Mr. President, I am very pleased to see you again.  If I remember correctly, this is our sixth meeting.

In April this year, you and I had a very good meeting in Washington, D.C., and reached important agreement on growing the China-U.S. relationship.  I’m happy to note that, thanks to the joint efforts of both sides, recently new progress has been made in this relationship.  I’m also happy to note that last month, the second round of China-U.S. strategic and economic dialogues produced positive outcomes.

As things stand, the international situation continues to undergo profound and complex changes.  And we are confronted with the challenges of promoting the full recovery of the world economy.  And there’s global challenges.  We need to continue to follow the spirit of staying the same course and uniting together.  We want to work with the U.S. side to maintain the high-level exchanges and interactions at various other levels and deepen our practical cooperation across the board.

We also want to strengthen the community in coordination with the U.S. side on major regional and international issues to continue to move forward the positive, cooperative and comprehensive China-U.S. relationship.

Now, I want to give the floor to you, Mr. President.

PRESIDENT OBAMA:  Well, Mr. President, it is wonderful to see you again, and your delegation.  I want to thank you for the very positive letter that I received from you most recently because I think you accurately note the tremendous progress that we’ve made in improving our relations.

We’ve worked very hard, and our teams have worked very hard, over the last 18 months to build a relationship of trust and mutual confidence.  And it is my belief that we have accomplished many things as a consequence of that hard work.

We recently had a successful second round of our strategic and economic dialogue.  And the first round of our human rights dialogue.  Larry Summers and Tom Donilon will be traveling to China in early August at my request to talk to your top economic and foreign policy advisors, and we’re also looking forward to an invitation for a visit by Defense Secretary Gates in the coming months.

[Press were escorted out of the room while President Obama was still speaking.]

END                4:52 P.M. EDT